War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  The door was a sturdy wood that time and weather had splintered near the knob. I knocked, waiting for an answer, then knocked again. The knock had a hollow ring, the kind usually heard in an empty building.

  I glanced down the steps at the van. The sun shone off the windshield, hiding Malcolm and Jimmy from me. But Jimmy wasn’t striding up the street defiantly, so I figured they were waiting below.

  I knocked one final time, listening to the hollow sound echo through the house’s lower floor. Then I grabbed the knob and pushed the door open.

  Dust motes floated toward me, along with the faint smell of old cigarettes and a fresh scent of mold. As I put my foot down inside, the floor creaked, and I wondered if it would hold my weight. The top of my skull brushed against the ceiling, and I bent at the waist so that I wouldn’t hit my head again.

  The low ceiling and narrow room gave me a hint at the building’s age. It probably had been built in the eighteenth century. I’d been in many eighteenth-century buildings in Massachusetts, and all of them had had impossibly low ceilings.

  It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I left the door open for what little light it could give me. The main room had no furniture except a broken chair that looked as old as the house.

  A central, freestanding fireplace made of brick dominated the room. Thick wood beams supported the low ceiling. The walls were made of long boards that had cloth stuck in between the slats for insulation.

  I walked around the fireplace into the next room. A large metal table was pushed against the wall. Beside it, empty boxes were turned on their sides. The boxes extended almost to the center, like discarded garbage.

  I used my foot to move a box toward the light. On one side, someone had stenciled: Danger, Explosives. On another, someone had written: Dynamite: Handle with Care.

  My heart started beating hard. I examined the others, moving as slowly as I could so that I wouldn’t accidentally hit something I shouldn’t have. The boxes were stenciled with names: Douglass and Sons, Bower Builders, and Tucker Construction were the first ones that I saw.

  Beneath the empty boxes were a few full ones. I stuck my fingers in the hem of my shirt to keep my fingerprints off the cardboard, and then pulled a box open. I saw books piled on top of each other haphazardly. I slid the box toward the door, so that I could see what was inside, then inspected the other full boxes.

  One was filled with cotton batting and chicken wire. Another was filled to the brim with nails. And a fourth had briefcases with U.S. Army stenciled across the top.

  Among the boxes I also found electrician’s wire, duct tape, and a partially disassembled alarm clock.

  I peered into the remaining room. It had once been the kitchen. Beer bottles lined the countertop, their labels missing. An empty box of detergent stood beside them, along with some ripped cloth for cleaning.

  I went deeper into the room, smelling something faint and pungent that was almost familiar. Then I found the source of the smell. An empty gasoline can and, beside it, an empty can of motor oil.

  My instincts told me to leave. The last thing I wanted was to get caught by the police in this building. The police would arrest me first and ask questions later — if they asked questions at all.

  But I hadn’t seen everything. I had to see if I could find anything that tied Daniel to this place.

  I felt slightly dizzy, but I kept going, finding the stairs leading to the second floor. Up there I found some discarded clothing and crumpled sheets of paper. I picked one up, unfolded it, and saw that it contained writing. I put it in my pocket. Then I grabbed the rest, holding them as if I had found a bootleg version of the Gettysburg Address.

  On one wall, someone had scrawled Bring the War Home! Beneath it, I saw some fresh footprints in the dust. So this was probably what had convinced Malcolm he had the right house.

  I hated the thought of Malcolm in here. He had been lucky that the building was empty. Who knew what would have happened to him had he caught the people who collected this much bomb-making material at home.

  I went through the entire second story, finding a ripped blanket, some filthy socks, and little else. Then I went back downstairs and examined the kitchen and the back room again.

  My foot brushed against something near one of the counters, making the scratching sound of metal against wood.

  I crouched, used my shirt as a glove, and picked up the item with my left hand. A blasting cap. I hadn’t seen one in years. Gingerly, I set the cap on one of the empty countertops, and eased out of the room, wiping my prints off the doorknobs as I went.

  Thank heavens Malcolm had enough sense to stay behind with Jimmy. Thank heavens I hadn’t allowed Jimmy along. With all the combustibles in that building, one wrong move could have set it alight.

  I hoped that my information was wrong, that there was nothing to tie Daniel Kirkland to that building. I clutched the wadded-up sheets of paper in my right hand.

  They could be nothing.

  They could be everything.

  It took all of my willpower to hang onto them, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what kind of information they held.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I left the house in a hurry, my back aching from the unusual posture I’d had to maintain while inside. The sunlight blinded me, and the heat seemed even more oppressive than it had before.

  But I couldn’t smell the stench of the nearby harbor or the acrid scent of smoke. My nostrils were filled with the odor of gasoline, and it was making me light-headed.

  I ran down the steps, a headache building across my eyes. It took me a moment to see the van. Jimmy and Malcolm stood outside of it, their hands shaded over their eyes as they stared up at me.

  They had heard me banging out of the house. I made a terrible racket in my effort to leave quickly. I slowed down, took deep breaths, and tried to calm myself. I didn’t want to panic Jimmy.

  But the paraphernalia in the house had only one use.

  Bomb making.

  When I reached them, Jimmy stared up at me, his expression neutral, as if he were the adult and I was the upset child.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  We were all in trouble, three black males standing outside a panel van on a mostly deserted street. I had just come from a house filled with bomb-making equipment.

  I had papers clutched in my hand.

  “We have to leave,” I said. “Now.”

  “Smoke—” Jimmy started.

  “In the van. Now.”

  I didn’t raise my voice, but the boys seemed to catch my panic. They got inside and slammed the doors. I climbed into the driver’s seat, handed the papers to Malcolm, and started the van.

  Then I checked the mirrors to see if anyone had been watching the house.

  There were no obvious observers. But I couldn’t tell if the nearby buildings were occupied or not.

  I pulled into the street, but made sure I didn’t speed away. I wanted to draw as little attention to us as possible.

  “What’s going on, Smoke?” Jimmy asked.

  “You didn’t tell me the place was filled with bomb-making equipment,” I said to Malcolm.

  “I said it had weird stuff,” he said.

  “In every room. On every floor.” I glanced in the mirrors again. Still nothing. We weren’t being followed.

  “I didn’t know what most of that stuff was,” Malcolm said.

  “It’s all for making bombs,” I said.

  “So you think what everybody’s been saying about Daniel is right?” Malcolm asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know if he lived there or not.”

  “Oh, he did,” Malcolm said. “Believe me. I know he’d been there.”

  My breath caught. I didn’t want to know this. “What makes you so sure?”

  “The T-shirt,” Malcolm said.

  Jimmy was watching the mirrors too. He had caught my fear, and knew how to respond.

  “What T-shirt?” I t
urned onto Fair Haven’s main street.

  “The one bundled up against the wall?”

  I had seen the discarded clothes, but I hadn’t looked through them.

  “What about it?” I asked.

  “It’s a Museum of Science and Industry T-shirt. Daniel got it for being in the all-city high school science fair the museum sponsored four years ago.”

  “Was he that good at science?” I drove the car toward the bridge. I wanted out of Fair Haven as quickly as possible.

  “Yeah,” Malcolm said. “He placed that year. Everyone wanted him to join the next year but he wouldn’t because the company that sponsored the competition was one he didn’t approve of.”

  My mouth was dry. The van’s wheels sang along the metal bridge. I glanced at the mirrors again. We were alone on the road.

  Sweat ran down my back.

  I had underestimated Daniel. I had ignored the evidence around me. I had believed Grace, who was as deluded about her son as the Whickams were about their daughter.

  And I had deluded myself.

  I had thought that someone as competent as Grace couldn’t raise a boy like Daniel, a boy dedicated to overthrowing the government, a boy who left Yale to start a real war at home, a war he would start with bombs and guns and the death of innocents.

  “Now what, Smoke?” Jimmy asked.

  “We have to find him,” I said. “Before someone gets killed.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  I drove to one of New Haven’s newly built parking garages, figuring if we were followed, the tail would have to come inside. I stopped the van on the third level and rolled down the windows.

  I waited a few minutes, but no other car showed up. We were alone on this level. Once I was convinced no one had followed us, I examined the papers I had found inside the Barn.

  Most were just doodles. Bridges, buildings, a few with jaunty stick figures walking past. One was a page ripped out of a book. Another was a political cartoon from an old newspaper. It showed anarchists blowing up a building.

  The sweat turned to ice against my skin.

  Malcolm was uncrinkling some of the pages as well. Jimmy had taken one and was studying it.

  “ ‘Of all of the good stuff, this is the stuff,’ ” he read. “ ‘Just stuff the stuff into an inch pipe, plug up the ends, and—’ ”

  I snatched the paper away from him. This, too had come from an old book. It was a recipe for a pipe bomb — an old-fashioned pipe bomb, one that didn’t take wire and blasting caps, but one that used dynamite and gunpowder.

  My hands were shaking.

  “This is just sick.” Malcolm set more sheets of paper on the seat. One sheet had a crudely drawn bottle, with the ingredients of a Molotov cocktail written along the side in a back-slanting hand. Another hand wrote, in blue pen: If we add detergent into the mix, make it sticky, it becomes a flammable paste. And someone else wrote beneath that: Napalm!!!!!!!

  But the sheet in my pocket was the one that made me the most nervous. Torn from a street map of Manhattan, several places were circled in red. One had an exclamation point through it, and a 74 beside it.

  I didn’t let Malcolm or Jimmy see that. I simply looked at it, then shoved it back into my pocket.

  My headache had grown worse. I couldn’t, in good conscience, call the police, not while I was still in New Haven. I was afraid they would come after me, particularly if someone saw the panel van with its Illinois plates on the nearby street.

  But someone had to know about this building. Someone had to know how dangerous it was.

  “Now what?” Malcolm asked.

  “Now I guess we head to New York,” I said.

  THIRTY

  I wanted to leave New Haven quickly, but I knew better than to check out of the motel so late in the day. Someone would notice. Someone would think we had left in a panic.

  When we got back to the motel, I took a shower in an attempt to get the dust off me and the stench of gasoline out of my nose. I wasn’t sure how much of that smell came from my own dislike of explosives or from an actual gasoline odor in the house.

  Once I had cleaned off, I tore up the papers and flushed them down the toilet. The last thing I wanted was to have another visit from the New Haven police, and have them find pages describing bomb-making.

  I sent Malcolm out to get us some pizza. Then I called Professor Whickam. I told him we’d confirmed the lead in New York.

  After we finished eating, I took the van out for a drive. I stopped at my old phone booth on Dixwell Avenue, and took out the rest of my dimes. I had several long-distance calls to make.

  The first was to Whickam’s neighbor.

  “Haven’t seen any activity,” he said. “But folks say there’s a light on in the apartment at night. They just figure Whickam left the light on the last time he was here.”

  “When was that?” I asked, trying to gauge how truthful Whickam had been with me.

  “Beats me,” the elderly gentleman said. “He doesn’t report his comings and goings to me. He only calls when he needs something.”

  I thanked him. A light was better than nothing. It was a lead.

  Then I called a number I hadn’t dialed in more than a decade. I was amazed I remembered it. The phone rang, and I was beginning to think I’d been wrong, when someone answered.

  The voice was a man’s, deep and throaty, but with an edge that marked it as young.

  “Is Gwendolyn Cole there?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Just a minute.”

  The phone line crackled and thumped as he set the receiver down. I clung to my own phone, watching the cars go by on Dixwell. The phone booth was stiflingly hot, but I wasn’t willing to open the door. I didn’t want anyone to overhear the conversation.

  Then the phone crackled some more, and a woman’s voice said, “Yes?”

  The voice should have sounded familiar, and it did, in a half-forgotten way. I would have said that her voice was higher pitched, that her New York accent was less pronounced.

  “Gwen?” I said. “It’s Smokey.”

  “Smokey Dalton?” she said. “Good Lord, Smoke. You fell off the face of the earth. Never thought I’d hear from you again.”

  “Things have changed,” I said, not knowing what to say. My relationship with Gwen had gone from intimate to a few letters to nothing in the space of fifteen years.

  “I guess,” she said. “Where’ve you been? What’re you doing? It’s been so long.”

  “I’m on a pay phone, Gwen,” I said. “But I’m planning to come to the city in a few days, and we can catch up. I was wondering though if you knew who I could call to get a short-term apartment. I can’t remember the name of the agent I used to use.”

  “You can stay right here,” she said.

  Sweat trickled down the side of my face. I leaned against the glass wall of the booth, hoping to feel something cooler, but the glass was as hot as I was.

  “Much as I appreciate the offer, Gwen, there’s three of us. I can’t put you out like that.”

  “You’re not putting me out,” she said. “Normally I’ve got room for four, but Alex is here on leave, so the three of you would have to share.”

  I blinked, trying to concentrate. The gasoline headache had never entirely left, and now the heat was making it worse. “What would Lionel say if I stayed there?”

  “Lionel don’t say nothing.” She sounded offended. “I haven’t seen the son of a bitch in five years, and I hope I don’t see him ever again.”

  “I’m sorry, Gwen. I had no idea.”

  “What’m I supposed to do? Write you a Christmas card, saying the guy I dumped you for wasn’t Prince Charming after all?”

  I had forgotten her edge. It was one of the many things I liked about her.

  “Didn’t mean to be so sharp,” she said without pausing for breath. “I’d love to see you and your friends.”

  “I think it’d be more comfortable for both of us, Gwen, if I found less personal lodgings.” T
he words sounded stiffly formal, but I meant them. I didn’t know how to explain my circumstances to Gwen without talking about the past year, and I didn’t know how to explain Gwen to Malcolm or Jimmy.

  “Afraid of your past, Smoke?” she asked.

  “We didn’t part on the best of terms, Gwen. I wasn’t exactly the sanest in those years, and I certainly don’t want to bring up bad memories for Alex.”

  “He was six, Smokey. He’s twenty now. And in the army, for God’s sake. He can handle anything.”

  “That was Alex who answered the phone?”

  “Yep. He’s back for two weeks. The idiot signed up for a second tour just before Nixon announced he was bringing back the troops.”

  “A second tour?” I said, trying to imagine the little boy I’d last seen as a grown man who’d already served in the military. “He’s in Vietnam?”

  “Not at the moment.” For the first time, her voice wobbled. “I wouldn’t mind seeing you. And if you’re worried about your wife meeting me, I’ll be the soul of discretion.”

  “Wife?” I said, then understood how she’d interpreted my mentioning three people. “I’m not married, Gwen. I’m traveling with my son and a friend.”

  “She’s got nothing to worry about from me, that’s all I’m saying.” Her voice had recovered its strength.

  “It’s a male friend. He’s helping me take care of Jim while I work on this trip.”

  The operator interrupted, demanding more money. I plugged in dimes, listening to them clink-clink. Then I said, “Gwen, I don’t have enough for a longer call. Can you give me the name of an agent?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Hang on.”

  She set the phone down. I counted my dimes, hoping she’d return before I had to plug the phone again.

  She did. She gave me a name and number, which I dutifully wrote down. “If he doesn’t have anything, you come here, Smokey,” she said, and gave me her address.

  I promised I would.

  “Don’t be a stranger,” she said. “If you’re in the city, I want to see you.”

  Oddly enough, I wanted to see her, too.